May. 08, 2009

The Hobbit Debate

When the bones of an unusually small hominin were discovered in a cave
on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, the find sparked a battle
in anthropological circles: were the bones the remnants of a new species of hominin, previously unknown to science, yet alive as recently as 12000 years ago -- or were the bones in the cave from modern humans suffering from microcephaly and other bone deformations? The argument over the bones, which have come to be nicknamed 'hobbits' due to their small size and large feet, has continued in the
scientific literature ever since. This week in the journal Nature, a
team of researchers make the case that Homo floresiensis was indeed a
distinct species, and that the hobbits may be even more distantly related to modern humans than previously thought. We'll talk about the hobbit studies and what they tell us about human evolution.